It's official - House finds Holder in Contempt

The GOP-led House voted Thursday to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for failing to provide key information pertaining to Operation Fast and Furious, making Holder the first sitting Cabinet member to be held in contempt.

The vote was 255 to 67 with one lawmaker voting not present.

Original story ...

“It’s important to remember how we got here,” Boehner, R-Ohio, said during a floor speech ahead of the vote. “The Justice Department has not provided the facts and information we requested. … It’s our constitutional duty to find out.”

The GOP-led House wants to hold the attorney general in contempt for failing to provide additional information about a failed gun-running sting known as Fast and Furious that was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, a division of the Justice Department led by Holder.

“What is happening here is shameful," said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who argued House Republicans are more politically motivated in attacking Holder than getting to the bottom of the failed operation, in which at least two of the guns were connected to the fatal shooting of U.S. border agent Brian Terry.

The House is expected to vote on two contempt orders -- a criminal and a civil resolution – but not before Democrats walked out.

Lawmakers vote against a proposal by Rep. John Dingle, D-Mich., to return the matter to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

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CNN: Almost every House Republican backed the measure, along with 17 Democrats.

Florida Republican Rep. Sandy Adams, a former law enforcement officer whose husband — also a law enforcement officer — was killed in the line of duty, said on the House floor that she doesn’t view, as some Democrats keep claiming, efforts to hold Holder in contempt as political.

“I am going to come to you from a different angle; one of a law enforcement officer,” Adams said. “I served over 17 years as a law enforcement officer. I worked many undercover operations. And as a law enforcement officer, we knew you don’t give guns to bad guys — the drug cartels, they are bad guys.”

“You know that if you let a gun walk with a bad guy, you’re going to see that gun whether it is at a crime scene, or you are going to be looking down the barrel of it,” she continued. “So when the attorney general came to our committee, I asked him: ‘Who approved this operation?’ ‘Why was it approved?’ And he said … he just wouldn’t answer, he didn’t know. Okay, well, what rises to the level of the attorney general if an international operation that allows guns to walk to another country, and are used to kill one of our agents, and used to kill and maim their citizens? Does it rise to his level of approval? Who approved it?”

Adams went on to say that Holder admitted “it was flawed from the beginning. And yet, we still have no answers.”

“Let me just say this: I have heard from the other side of the aisle and from my colleagues here today that this is political,” Adams said. “This isn’t political — to me, it’s personal. We have a law enforcement officer doing his job who was killed by a flawed operation that no one will take ownership of in the attorney general’s office.”